While reading a PDF version of Sigma Pi Fraternity, International‘s Emerald magazine from October 1919 (Volume 6, Issue 3), I came across the brief article below, written by Harold K. Bowen.

As a clarifying aside, Brother Bowen is listed as being from “Delta-Xi,” though that is not possible using the chapter designations that the Fraternity uses today since the Fraternity’s Delta-Xi Chapter was founded at Southern Utah University in 1970 and this article was published in 1919. My assumption is that Brother Bowen is from Xi Chapter at the University of Iowa (the Fraternity’s records show a Ralph Bowen initiated into Xi Chapter back in 1918) which was part of the Delta Province at the time. Today, the Fraternity uses geographic demarcations to name provinces (Heartland Province, New England Province, South Atlantic Province, etc.), but this was not always the case – in the early 1900s, Sigma Pi used Greek letters to name the provinces.

The information that Brother Bowen provides in his write-up is interesting from a historical perspective, but also deeply relevant to keep in mind during formal recruitment. Here is Brother Bowen’s advice that you should remember when considering men for membership in Sigma Pi:

BADGE MEN OR CROWD MEN?Harold K. Bowen, Delta-Xi

Sigma Pi does not seek to claim any man who desires to enter our Fraternity that he may merely wear our badge. Such a man if received within our fold would prove undesirable owing to his peculiar make-up. A self-individual within a fraternity is out of his environment and it would require more than a badge to convince him that he was in the right environment. He could not possess that capacity of wanting things for his fellowmen and would never sacrifice his interests or desires that his brothers might be benefited thereby.

Occasionally we recognize a fraternity man by his badge, only to conclude much to the discredit of his fraternity that he lacks that requisite quality of a true fraternity man, that of being a good mixer. Though he may have acquired much in wealth or honor he would know little of men and their ways. Anyone desirous for self alone could not be recognized as an authority on men and would never be considered by the world as one of its spokesmen.

Fraternity men should be crowd men and as such feel more at home when rubbing elbows with their brother men of the crowd. It is not easy to have courage for others when they are not interested in what should be our common endeavors. However, the men who achieve in this world are those who possess the courage to want things for others. They are not for self. (Nor is success measured by self.)

Sigma Pi is for all of us when all of us cooperate to make it better and bigger. Badge men should not seek to be Sigma Pis. Sigma Pi wants crowd men.

As is so often the case with our forefathers in Sigma Pi Fraternity, Brother Bowen writes eloquently about what the Fraternity needs to thrive. He distinguishes between Badge Men and Crowd Men with the primary difference being that Badge Men join a fraternity simply to join. Or, as was common in the 1910s when this was written, some men joined a fraternity just to show off the group’s badge on their chest instead of earning the privilege of wearing that badge everyday that they were honored to be a member.

Do you know someone like that in your chapter? Someone who is more concerned about being a “frat guy” than about living a contemporary revival of the storied history behind the letters on his chest?

Today, think of the guys who come out for rush just because they want to be a “frat guy” and not necessarily because they want to join something bigger than themselves. These are the opposite of the Crowd Men that Brother Bowen notes in his essay. He says that Crowd Men are those who “have courage for others when they are not interested in what should be our common endeavors.” What does this mean? In today’s terms, Crowd Men are those who are constantly working to improve their local chapter, the larger Greek community, and the plight of collegians across the country. They take an interest in what is important for the Fraternity, but they also see the larger battles taking place across our culture and work to improve the standing of their friends, fraternity brothers, and colleagues in the greater struggle.

One of Brother Bowen’s final comments resonated with me in a particular way. He writes, “Sigma Pi is for all of us when all of us cooperate to make it better…” We need more men – young and old alike – who are committed to cooperating to truly making the Fraternity better for all of us, but more importantly – better for the next generation of Sigma Pi men who have yet to join us.

Have you ever picked up a book, read it for a few days, put it down for a few weeks, then picked it up again and read it for a few more days before repeating this cycle? Well, that’s the history of my attempts at reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Return of the Shadow, one of the History of Middle-Earth series that was edited and formed by Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien. And that’s not a criticism of the novel or its contents, but rather a commentary on what one needs to be prepared for when picking up this book and reading it. This is not a book that is for the timid reader or the passive reader. The Return of the Shadow is the type of book that you need to actively read – similar to how a collegiate English Literature student would read a novel in preparation for creating a critical analysis of the material. I admit that when I started reading this book, I was not ready for that level of active participation in what was in front of me. In fact, I stopped and started this book over the course of several years, but finished the last 168 pages just recently in the last few days.

Putting my own, initially incorrect approach to reading this book aside, if you are looking for a deep, highly detailed dive into the formation of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, then this is it. The Return of the Shadow brings you to the very first drafts of The Lord of the Rings – to a world where the familiar foursome of hobbits that are the stars of the trilogy are not Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin. Instead, the reader is treated to Faramond, Frodo, Merry, Odo, Folco, and a host of other hobbits that never made their way into starring roles in the final trilogy. The Return of the Shadow also takes its readers into the thought process behind Tolkien’s creation of iconic characters like Treebeard and Strider. Would you believe that in their first incarnations these well-known players in The Lord of the Rings were much different? For example, in Tolkien’s first draft, Treebeard was working in the service of Sauron. And Strider? He began as the hobbit Peregrin! And these characters are set in a Middle-Earth that includes a forgotten elvish land named Hollin, a Rohan that is still filled with horse lords – but whom are also working in the service of Sauron, and where Gondor is known as Ond.

As fascinating as this early version of Middle-Earth may sound, there are some aspects of The Return of the Shadow that were a bit much for this reader. For example, in his writing and analysis of his father’s work, Christopher Tolkien often repeats words and phrases regarding the story that become more and more laborious as you go along. Also, in some cases he beats a dead horse to the point of absurdity. At one point at the beginning of the third phase of this book, Christopher Tolkien revealed that Odo was no longer going to be part of traveling group and that he would be replaced by Frodo. However, he repeats this revelation three or four times within two or three pages. For someone who gets the point the first time, you do not need to have the same information repeated to you several more times within the span of a few pages.

All things considered, I am glad to have read The Return of the Shadow. While it is an incredibly dense book and while it sometimes dives too deeply for my liking, it is truly a novel that captures the impressive scope and wide-ranging depth of not just Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, but the variety of fascinating characters that live within it. If there is a Lord of the Rings fan in your house or in your family and you want to get them a book that they can get lost in for hours, then this book would make the perfect gift.

Back in July 2013, I reviewed the first book in Stephen Martino’s Alex Pella trilogy. At the time, I was struck by the novel’s fast-paced action thriller approach to telling a captivating story that included very strong overtones to our then-current political environment. The Hidden Reality is the second installment in the Alex Pella trilogy and is a true successor to The New Reality in both its tone and style. Just as with the first novel in the series, The Hidden Reality drops the reader directly into the action and moves at a fast pace to jump start the story from the very first page. If you are looking for a story that has a sleepy opening and then slowly lumbers through chapter after chapter until something major happens, then this is not the book for you! The Hidden Reality starts off hot and keeps the temperature up throughout the entire novel.

Fast-paced, action-packed storytelling aside, if you are looking for a novel that has compelling characters that you actually care about and can become emotionally-invested in as you read, then The Hidden Reality is your book. In fact, one of the primary reasons that I could not put this book down was because Martino writes characters that I could relate to and whose stories I wanted to read. His characters mean something to the plot and are not just throwaway placeholders or MacGuffins. Alex Pella, for example, is a hero that you want to cheer for; he’s someone that you want to see win in the end because he awakens the best parts of how we see ourselves. Putting aside the main character for a moment, the novel has additional characters who are absorbing – and for different reasons. Without giving away any of the major plot points, in the beginning of the novel a character named Jules laments to his fellow board members that their corporation is so large and so omnipresent in the lives of everyone on the planet that it has rendered humanity weak and somewhat mentally-stunted. He goes into a diatribe about people no longer having the fortitude or desire to rise up against these types of overwhelming power structures because they rarely think any more. As a reader, I found myself considering the many times that I have felt the same frustration as Jules. I thought about the times that I have passionately implored people to wake up to what is going on around them only to realize that I am stuck talking to people who are mostly wearing blank stares on their faces.

It is not a fun experience and I uniquely understood how Jules felt in that moment.

The brilliance of The Hidden Reality and of the entire Alex Pella series, though, is the deep connections that Martino’s dystopian future has with the often scary revelations that are becoming far too common in our own world. When our Internal Revenue Service was used as an attack dog for political purposes and the most prolific website on the internet (Facebook) is rolling out updates to its face-recognition software and strongly encouraging its more than one billion users to play along, one has to wonder how close we are to achieving Martino’s hidden reality today. The Hidden Reality features a global organization that can track anyone’s location based on their subatomic wavelengths, individuals who place implants in their eardrums to communicate, and the fusion and evolution of corporate behemoths into a global government. Are we really that far away from any of these headlines being published in our own media and in our own time?

The Hidden Reality combines a dystopian future with the mental rigor of a medically-augmented and futuristic plot to create an action-packed story that is fun to read and hard to put down. If I were publishing this review during the summer months, then I would strongly recommend you pick up a copy of this book to read while you are relaxing on the beach. As we are in the doldrums of winter, though, I cannot think of a better book to read while snuggled up by the fire on a cold winter day. When the temperature drops outside, I highly recommend you kick it up a notch inside by jumping into the Alex Pella series!

Incidentally, this was the first e-book that I read on Amazon’s Kindle app. I do not really have any complaints about the Kindle platform. In fact, I think it worked out pretty well considering that I had the Kindle app install on my Samsung Nook tablet (weird, right?).

Since August 2003, I have proudly volunteered as the local advisor to the Delta-Beta Chapter of Sigma Pi Fraternity at Monmouth University. The role that I fill is called the Chapter Director and I officially held this position for the better part of the last 14 years. There was a two and a half year period where I switched from being the Chapter Director at Monmouth to Sigma Pi Fraternity’s Province Archon for all of New Jersey. The Province Archon is a volunteer advisor and coordinator for a specific geographic region. I held that position from August 2006 through January 2009 and the reason why I resigned from that position might be the focus of a future article here on the blog, but is irrelevant today. At the time that I resigned as the Province Archon for New Jersey, the Delta-Beta Chapter Director position was just vacated by the alumnus who held the position after me, so I was able to easily move back into the Chapter Director position again. I resigned as Chapter Director last August to focus on my obligations as a member of the national board of directors, but I still work with the young men at Monmouth on a daily basis.

Undergraduates and alumni from Delta-Beta Chapter in February 2017

Before I became the Chapter Director at Monmouth, our Faculty Advisor held the position. Our Faculty Advisor is probably the best, most engaged Faculty Advisor in the entire fraternity (in fact, when Sigma Pi started giving out a #1 Faculty Advisor in the nation award, our advisor was the first recipient). However, when I graduated in 2003, the position was ripe for a new person to hold it. I spent two years as the President of my chapter and during that time I was required to research the many events, reports, and issues that our chapter was completely out of the loop on. Shortly after I graduated, the new President of the chapter and I traveled to Sigma Pi’s leadership school and talked to the fraternity’s Executive Director about our situation. During our trip, I was asked to become the new Chapter Director and we implemented that change immediately.

What I learned from my time as an undergraduate leader through my time as a young alumni volunteer and now to someone who has some seasoning as a volunteer is that undergraduates are, naturally, not as connected to the on-going workings of the national organization as one might expect. In other words, national student organizations like fraternities and sororities should not expect every single undergraduate leader at every single undergraduate chapter to take an impassioned interest in the finer points of completing and submitting monthly or quarterly or annual reports. There is going to be an equally less-than-enthusiastic understanding of why it is necessary and beneficial to attend national conferences and regional workshops.

It is one of the many jobs of a local and regional volunteer to connect with their undergraduates in an educational, uplifting, and genuine way. The connection must be educational because we need to make the mundane reporting relevant to their everyday experiences as undergraduate leaders. The connection must be uplifting because today’s young men are berated and denigrated by nearly every corner of society just because they are young men. Who will tell our young men, “Good job!” or “I’m proud of you,” if not for us?

But most importantly, the connection must be genuine because undergraduates can see through lies and falsehoods with laser-like accuracy. And they should cut through the nonsense!

I’ll be writing more about mentoring undergraduates soon, so stay tuned!

One of the many fascinating elements of reading past issues of The Emerald is generating a basic idea of the climate within a Sigma Pi chapter during the early years of the fraternity. I recently finished reading the January 1916 issue of The Emerald which featured a lengthy update on the Kappa Chapter of Sigma Pi and its history at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Temple University around the turn of the century

What I liked best about reading this update from the Kappa Chapter is that they told a wonderful story regarding the history of their chapter. And I might add that they told their story in a beautifully written piece where the language was rich and the content was deep. There are no writers today who put pencil to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in as beautiful, meaningful, and precise a language as what I have read in the old issues of The Emerald.

Some other interesting notes and observations from the January 1916 issue of The Emerald:

Who Should Be Elected to the Grand Council?
This is of particular interest to me since I am running for the Grand Council next month. There was an editorial in The Emerald that gives good advice on the type of person who should not be elected to the Grand Council. The magazine says: “…the distance between good intentions and actual results from hard work is so infinite, that to elect or reelect a man simply because he appears to love the Fraternity; to propose the name of a man simply to get chapter representation or to hold on to a man who has proven his worthlessness, not only injures the Fraternity at large but seriously handicaps the Grand Chapter.”

What to Expect at Convocation
Next month’s Convocation will be the eighth one that I have attended. Before attending my first Convocation in 2002, I had no idea what to expect. Well, for brothers who find themselves in a similar position to the one that I was in 14 years ago, here is what the editors of The Emerald wrote to prepare Sigma Pi Fraternity for Convocation 100 years ago: “The coming Convocation is the logical and appointed time to shoulder all your grievances, protests or recommendations and go after the ‘powers’ without gloves. All delegates should come ‘armed to the teeth’ with sound arguments to propel their pet hobbies through the ranks of the ‘enemy.’ The man who has to stop to think is going to find it rough sledding.”

What is the Executive Council?
In this issue as in prior issues, The Emerald lists both the Grand Council as well as something called the Executive Council. It seems to me like the so-called Executive Council is either the group of people who worked for the fraternity at the time or an expanded governing body of volunteers, which we sorely need today. Seven Grand Council members just does not cut it in 2016 – we need more.

The “Father of Chapters”
The brothers at the Kappa Chapter referred to themselves as the “Father of Chapters” because they set up two iterations of the Delta Chapter at the University of Pennsylvania and the Theta Chapter at Penn State University. Back in 1916, there were only 9 active chapters so Kappa Chapter’s claim was pretty legitimate.

Who was the First Grand Sage?
Throughout their update, the Kappa Chapter talks about so-and-so being elected as the Chancellor of the chapter. Based on what I’ve read, it sounds like the position of Sage used to be called Chancellor. At some point in their update, they mention that Kappa Chapter alumnus M. Atlee Ermold attended Convocation at the end of October 1910. During that Convocation, Ermold was elected as the Grand Sage of the fraternity and was “the first man in Sigma Pi to hold that title.” Interesting. So were Francis L. Lisman and Winford L. Mattoon not the “Grand Sage” but, instead, the National Chancellors of Sigma Pi Fraternity?

No Love for the Herald!
Incidentally, they refer to the chapter’s Executive Council as the Sage, First Counselor, Second Counselor, Third Counselor, Fourth Counselor, and “fifth member.” No love for the Herald position back in 1916!

Fall and Spring Convocations – Not Summer
Also, whenever Convocation is referenced in the old issues of The Emerald, it never takes place during the summer months. Rather, the Convocations seem to have taken place during the months of April and October. Why did this change? The fraternity appears to be so disconnected during the summer months and most of today’s undergraduates are busy working summer jobs to pay increasing tuition, textbook, and off-campus living costs that it seems like holding an event during the school year might actually generate higher attendance along with some cost savings. Who knows? It’s probably worth some research. Here is a screenshot of the invitation to the 1916 Convocation that was included in the magazine:

Kappa Takes a Shot at New Jersey!
As a New Jersey guy I have to take issue with Kappa Chapter’s comment that one of the negatives about a recent initiate is that “he hails from Camden, NJ, that barnacle which clings to Philadelphia’s water line.” How dare you?! We didn’t even have any New Jersey chapters back then to defend our good name!

The Worthiness of Inter-Fraternity Councils
I laughed out loud after reading this line in one of the editorials: “We sometimes wonder whether local Interfraternity Councils are of any real value or not.” Ha ha! Oh, if the editors of the magazine could only see some of the IFCs on our campuses today…

That is all that I have for this review of the January 1916 edition of the magazine. If you are interested in this type of stuff, then I encourage you to check out the online archive of The Emerald by clicking here!